"Drip...Drip...Drip..." / Rev. Dr. Richard Coble preaching / 7.19.26

Uh, this is a reading from the book of Job.

It's now for God's word to the church today.

This is Job talking to his friends.

He says, My relatives and my close friends have failed me.

The guests of my house have forgotten me.

My female servants count me as a stranger.

I have become an alien in their eyes.

I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer.

I myself must plead with him.

My breath is repulsive to my wife.

I am loathsome to my own family.

Even young children despise me.

When I rise, they talk against me.

All my intimate friends abhor me, and those whom I love have turned against me.

My bones cling to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.

Have pity on me.

Have pity on me, O you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me.

Why do you, like God, pursue me?

Never satisfied with my flesh.

Oh, that my words were written down, oh, that they were inscribed in a book, oh, that with an iron pen and with lead they were engraved on a rock forever, for I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth, and after my skin has been destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold and not another.

My heart faints within me.

This is the word of the Lord.

So I want to tell you about something I have forgotten from uh like my childhood.

Um, do you all remember from the 1990s?

So I'm going like going way back here, you know, turn of the century type stuff.

Uh 1990s.

Um, do you remember the chant from the Jerry Springer show?

You know, they're like the Jerry, Jerry, Jerry.

Um anytime there was a paternity test, uh, anytime there was like a clearly staged fight on the show, um, you would hear the audience.

They would start chanting, Jerry, Jerry, Jerry.

Um 1990s, you'll have to remember I was a preteen when that show aired.

From what I can remember, uh, Jerry Springer was on like every day and multiple times a day.

Like you could just turn the television on and it would be on.

Just weird hours.

Um if you stayed home from sick, you learned a lot about the world from Jerry Springer.

Jerry, Jerry, Jerry.

Uh, anyways, I was reminded about that chant that I've forgotten about from Kate Bowler's recent book, Joyful Anyway.

Uh, a lot of you probably know about Kate Bowler by now.

I talk about her a lot, I reference her a lot from the pulpit.

She is a uh Duke DeVinny professor, turned podcaster.

Um, in her new book, Joyful Anyway, she talks about her dad, Jerry, not Springer, Jerry Bowler.

Uh, he was a religion professor, just like she is.

Um, he wasn't quite as successful as Kay Bowler is.

He really struggled in his career in higher education.

Type of career that you um, you know, you do an adjunct position there, you do a visiting position there.

His career never really took off.

He never became, you know, like a tenured professor at a school.

Um lot of folks, frankly, struggle in higher education.

I can tell you about that personally.

Anyway, um, that struggle that he had, and probably some clinical depression that he had too, just really wasted away Kate Bowler's dad.

She remembers her dad, Jerry, really just kind of sleeping when he wasn't working.

Her mother would constantly go up to Kate and to her sister and just remind them, like, hey guys, uh, gotta be quiet.

Let's not disturb daddy's sleeping.

And Kate, at the time she was a child, she didn't realize sleeping meant your dad's so depressed he can't get himself out of bed.

She didn't realize that until later in life.

So you could say Kate Bowler tiptoed through her childhood.

Some of us might understand that.

Some of us might have experienced that or had someone we love experience that.

Not everybody, of course.

Uh depression is real and it is heartbreaking.

And sometimes from the outside, it just looks like somebody who likes to sleep a lot.

But in reality, for some folks, it just takes just this Herculean effort just to get out of bed.

And some days her dad, Jerry, he didn't get out of bed.

But other days, Kate would would hear like the shower would turn on.

Or, you know, she would hear the drip, drip, drip from the faucet as he uh got up to shave for the first time in a week.

And maybe to rouse himself, maybe to uh to summon that energy that those of us without depression will never know how much it takes to summon.

Uh Jerry Bowler would sometimes chant that dumb Jerry Springer chant to himself.

He would get up and he would start saying, like, Jerry, Jerry, Jerry.

And uh it would follow that percussion from the faucet that, you know, drip, drip, drip, Jerry, Jerry, Jerry.

And uh, and on those days, Jerry Bowler would get up for another day.

And his little girl Kate would breathe a sigh of relief, you know, for just a little while.

So here's a question I have today.

Uh, even for us, for those of us who are not living with depression, um, where does something like that come from?

Where does the effort come from to keep on keeping on, to keep trying, to make something meaningful out of a really hard time that you're going through, or to keep going even when every day just feels like a load of iron in your soul?

Where does that come from?

Where does that effort come from?

Because sometimes, I mean, if we're being honest, sometimes, not every day, but sometimes it's really hard, right?

It's really hard to just keep on keeping on.

What keeps you going?

It's a question for Job, too.

We just heard Job he's going through a really rough time.

Um, granted, Job is a bit of an extreme case.

Um, remember, he is the man who was cursed by God.

Uh, his family was decimated, uh, his skin breaks out in boils.

Um, God has put my family far from me, and my acquaintances are wholly estranged from me.

Uh, by the way, I'm not sure if y'all catched it because you didn't laugh.

Um, but I love that line.

Uh, my breath is repulsive to my wife.

I mean, who says that scripture is not true to life sometimes, right?

Um, but by the way, for Job, that's not um that's not coffee breath, that's not morning breath.

Um, that's the stank of disease from within.

Like Job is saying basically, like, his insides are rotting.

My bones cling to my skin, he says.

Job uh is not alone though.

If you read the other chapters, you see his friends come all around him.

But um, but you gotta use friends there in quotation marks because they're really just coming around not to console him, but to blame him, right?

Like they see what's going on and they're like, you know, Job, uh you must have done something, right?

You must have done something to deserve this.

But Job, throughout the entire book, over and over again, as we just read, he is insistent.

He's like, no, uh, this is not karma, folks.

Um, this is not cosmic justice, like something has gone really wrong here.

I don't deserve this, he's saying.

So if you read the whole chapter, I'll just say this really quickly.

Um, Job is pretty much cursing God throughout, right?

Um, and rightly so.

You can see where Job is coming from.

Um, I say all this to make sure that we don't read that second half of the chapter, which Daniel read, that we don't read that like Job is suddenly having an epiphany and he's woken up to like a great moment of faith.

Because it's not that.

It's not like piety when he says, I know that my Redeemer lives, which is a really famous line.

Anybody remember that from Handel's Messiah?

It's a really, really famous line.

So that is not Job suddenly like turning around, saying the sinner's prayer, accepting Jesus Christ into his heart as Lord and Savior.

That's it's not that.

Um it's not like faith, like an ever-flowing stream.

It really is more like um like a drop in a desert.

Um, I guess you could say it is like a small and stubborn refusal for Job to give up.

He's refusing to give up.

He's saying, Look, even though everything looks to the contrary, I know my Redeemer lives.

Wherever that Redeemer may be, sure would be great if that Redeemer would show up anytime now.

Anytime, God, sure would be great if you would show up.

That's the gift of the book of Job, by the way.

Um doesn't make for a rosy Sunday morning sermon, sorry y'all.

Um, but because of that, to me, like it really rings true to life.

Um, not because I've ever been cursed by God, and by the way, if there was ever a moment for a preacher to, you know, like knock on wood, this is it.

Um because his feeling of desperation, his feeling of not being listened to by God, I mean, it feels true to life, right?

I mean, you and me, maybe not right now, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but but sometime in our life, like we're all gonna have those moments, right?

Like uh when you cry out to God, you know, where are you?

And you just hear silence, right?

You've probably been there.

I sure have been there.

The gift of the book of Job is showing us that that cry and even that silence afterwards, it's not faithlessness, it's the opposite.

It's faith.

It's the stubborn refusal to give up faith.

It is that um that drip, drip, drip from the drain when someone has gotten up to shave for the first time in a week.

It is that question that maybe you don't scream it out loud, but you whisper it silently, you know, why?

Like, why is this happening?

Why is this going on?

How long, oh Lord, is this gonna keep going on?

Um, it's like when you're when you're on a road or you're living a life um that you never thought you would be living.

And yet you take another step on that road.

It's like when you're every day.

Do you know that feeling when like when you're every day, it kind of becomes this like this hum, this mmm, this uncomfortable hum of everyday life.

And you start to feel like you're just um you're not living it, you're more just kind of like going through it.

Um, you're just going through the motions.

It's kind of like that, but yet, even though you feel like you're just going through it, um, you're still there.

You still decide to show up anyway.

It's like that.

And uh, and the question I have for for Job and uh and for you is why, right?

Like, like uh why do you take that step?

Um, why do you keep showing up?

Um, why do you even ask the question, God, where are you if you're not expecting an answer?

Why why do we do that?

Where does that come from?

Um, and this is how Job would respond to us.

Job would say, well, it actually comes from faith.

The very fact that you're asking the question means you're not faithless.

In fact, you are faithful.

That question comes from faith itself.

Uh last week I mentioned that we are in a uh a sermon series called Freedom Songs, a three-part sermon series.

Uh don't worry, I'm not gonna sing to you this time.

But in line with that theme, uh, a couple weeks ago I heard this interview from the civil rights lawyer Brian Stevenson.

Do y'all know Brian Stevenson?

Um, some of you know him from like the slavery and lynching memorials in Montgomery.

I know we've had some groups go there before.

Some of you know him from his book, Just Mercy, which became a movie recently, a few years ago.

So the interview was it's July.

It was on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

And what he was doing was he was talking about the stories we tell about this country.

And Stevenson, he mentioned that in his museum and in his lynching memorial, um, quite on purpose.

One thing they don't do is uh they don't talk a lot about abolition or abolitionists, you know, like the famous abolitionists Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, William Lloyd Garrison, eventually Abraham Lincoln.

And why?

The interviewer asked him.

And what he said is because when we talk about slavery in this country, um, abolition tends to be all we talk about.

Uh we talk about a handful of heroic people who helped put an end to slavery.

But you have to remember, he said, uh chattel slavery in this land, uh, it was going on for a long time before the Declaration of Independence and a long time after it.

Um it went on actually for 250 years in this land.

Um it enslaved 10 million people in this land.

And he's saying, like, the abolitionists, it's a great story, but it's not the whole story.

In fact, it's it's really just kind of like a small part of that story.

And for most slaves in this country, uh, slavery, not abolition, was everything they ever knew.

Um, I've actually I've read the the writer Todd Nissy Coates Coates, Todd and Hissy Coates.

Um, he oftentimes says, you know, like, say you were born a slave in the middle of those 250 years.

That would mean that your parents and your grandparents and your great-grandparents, and probably even your great-great-grandparents were all slaves as far as far back as you can see.

And also, probably your children and your grandchildren, and maybe even your great-grandchildren, they were also all gonna be slaves.

So, again, if you were born right in the middle of it, slavery was all you knew and all you could ever see in this life.

So, what Brian Stevenson is basically saying is like, we've gotta say, we've gotta tell more stories than just stories of abolition, because there's a lot more to it than just that.

But, and I this is a really important, but but that doesn't mean everything's hopeless, too.

That doesn't mean there aren't other stories of hope in the midst of all of that.

And I think this is a really important point that he makes.

He says, like, think about this.

How easy would it have been if you were a slave and a mother to not get too close to your kid, right?

Because you knew at any point, like that kid could be sold and you not see them again, right?

Like, how easy would it have been to not love?

And yet, he says, if you look at the narratives, if you look at the stories that slaves left behind, like there is way more often cases than not, there was love.

There was still so much love in the midst of an impossible situation.

Uh think about this too, he says.

Um, think about in a lot of cases, um, it was illegal for slaves to learn how to read.

And yet, and we all know this, right?

We know that there are all of these stories about slaves who are willing to risk their lives to learn how to read in secret and teach each other how to read in secret.

Brian Stevenson, he says that um, his great-grandfather was a slave in Virginia.

And around 1850, when he was just a teenager, he taught himself how to read.

Could have lost his life for that.

And he did it anyway.

And his grandmother, so the great-grandfather's daughter, um, Brian Stevenson's grandmother says that after abolition, she remembers watching her dad um reading the newspaper out loud to other formerly enslaved folks so they would know what was going on in the world during Reconstruction.

And Brian Stevenson's grandmother, she told him that when she was a little girl and she was watching her dad read the newspaper out loud to other formerly enslaved folks, what she would do was she would go up and she would just give them this big hug, just cling to them, because she thought, remember, she was really little, she thought that's how you learned how to read.

You kind of like you learn through osmosis when somebody's reading out loud.

So think about that.

Like eventually, that great grandfather taught that grandmother, and then she taught her kids, and then that um that value for education went on to produce Brian Siemenson, right?

I mean, like one of the foremost civil rights lawyers operating in the country today.

It's a really hopeful arc.

So I should say, as we're as we're getting along here, um, we shouldn't get too much caught up in in the end story.

Right, the redemption arc either.

Um, we need to remember where all that started.

And where it started was this teenager who was born a slave in the 1850s, who taught himself to read.

And when he taught himself to read, you have to remember in the 1850s in Virginia, he didn't know the Civil War was coming, right?

He didn't know that emancipation was coming.

It wasn't inevitable.

He didn't know that eventually his descendant would eventually become Brian Stevenson, right?

I mean, there's there's no way he could have known that.

Instead, what he had, all he had, was just this like just this little spark of hope in the midst of just so much darkness.

Um, what he had was just this um, just this little drop of grace in um in a desert called slavery.

You could basically like call him Job.

He was basically Job crying out, like, I know my Redeemer lives, even though around him there was really no evidence that there was a Redeemer who was alive.

I heard another sermon um a few months ago from my old pastor, Dave Davis.

I talk about him a lot too up here.

Um he preaches at Nassau Church in Princeton, New Jersey.

It was a beautiful sermon, so I'm gonna I'm gonna borrow a little bit from it.

Um this is how he closed his sermon.

He said um he was talking about uh a baptismal font.

Um not not the not his church's baptismal font.

Um he had gone to visit another church, and he was saying this was actually pretty cool.

Um the baptismal font, it was hooked up to a water system.

So when it worked, when it worked, there was like a there was like a fountain just constantly feeding into the font, a fountain of water.

But you know, we know this.

Sometimes things break at church.

Uh when he visited, uh the water system was broken.

Um and instead of uh an ever-flowing stream, it was more just like a drop from the faucet, just um just drip, drip, drip.

It was really more a leak than anything else.

And Dave said, you know, sometimes um, sometimes that's grace for you, right?

Uh sometimes grace, sometimes faith.

It sure isn't an ever-flowing stream.

Uh, sometimes it's just a drop in the desert.

I think about the drop from the faucet when Kate Bowler's dad found the energy he needed to shave in the morning.

I think about that stubborn teenager in the 1850s who learned how to read when it was illegal.

I think about Job.

And I think about you.

And I'm gonna echo Dave's words here when he said, Give us that water, oh God.

Give us that water when the land is parched, give us that water when our souls thirst.

Give us just a little drop of grace, oh God.

Give us enough to sustain us on whatever road we're walking.

Friends listen.

Can you hear it?